[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] IT_Architect:
I have a new Sprint Touch Pro 2 with 6.5 and 2.5, stock ROM. The Today screen works. However, as a smart phone, it really isn't usable as-is. There is a total of 9 quicklinks, and the start menu is a mess. If you move things in the start menu, you break the quicklinks, so best to leave things where they land. Whatever it is that works to organize the interface needs to show unread e-mails, voice mails, and texts on the home/today screen, and a link to contacts, not that lame people thing. I get around this with the stock interface by dropping people out of the slider and pointing one of the top quicklinks to contacts. When I click on a new text message from the slider, it's pretty clumsey if you ask me. I have to look around for delete all etc. Lots of mouse clicks. I've been looking around at the likely suspects and would value your input.

Edit:

1. SPB Mobile Shell 3.5: I installed it for the third time and worked with it. My impression is that it is more about personalization and special effects. My impression is the pieces are not logically woven together to create an environment. First there is the home tab, with exactly 3 home pages, one left, and one right. There are a collection widgets that I can put on them. Second, there is a launcher. The Launcher has some impressive graphics for launching things. However, is seems to represent their concept of organizing the Start Menu into folders. You can see them if you click on the Start Menu. To me, it was confusing. The third area is the Carousel. It is very nice idea for organizing things, but it's pretty much pre-defined. I won't be coming back here because it doesn't match my needs or organizing the many apps the way I want to. It's easy on memory, 42%.

2. I worked with iPhoneToday, today. It has things like voicemail, e-mail, texts, etc. on a bottom row which does not scroll, so the important stuff is always visible. It's perfect for organization. You can add home screens at will and even label then on the top. You can change programs and the tabs they use. You can point them at the .exes or the shortcuts in the Start menu. You change the icon spacing and even have them scale to get more on a line. It's the easiest on RAM coming in at 39%. From an appearance standpoint, they really try. True to it's name, it closely resembles the iPhone. (Rubic's Cube) It uses the same size square icons for everything from volume, battery, etc., to e-mail, texts, etc. It just puts a number on the cube. You look around a bit to find what you want. It would look pretty good to someone who hasn't seen Sense. There are not real docs. The basics your will figure out by simply guessing. The other types of formatting are not as straightforward as CHT. The best source I've found is the wiki http://iphonetoday.wikidot.com/the-menus and to ask questions on the thread: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=633618 where people have been very responsive and helpful. Before I tried it, I just thought it was for iPhone wanabes. Not so. Unlike Sense and Mobile Shell, it is in fact a very well thought out environment when you're looking to use your phone as a single device to organize your world.

3. CHT 2.0: Sense by itself doesn't make any sense. Since people have been hammering me to try CHT, I've been following the CHT threads, 1.85 and 2.0. Normally, it makes sense to go with the newer one because that is where development would be, but my concern is the new 2.0 seems to have worn out the Cookie Monster, and he would be too worn out to support it. However, I decided to try 2.0 since the he wrote every line was gone through and made squeaky clean, and he did stick around long enough to wean the product.

Of the hundreds of posts I read, many say it's pretty resource intensive, and not so good for multi-taskers. (Like me) That makes sense, since it adds functionality to the an already pretty good size Sense UI, so that became my expectation. I started thinking that if it adds say 10%, it would make sense that things would get shaky, pretty quickly. Thus it made sense to test before and after adding CHT. The percent RAM usage came in at exactly 52%, and remained there even after using it for awhile. Since iPhoneToday can be run inside Sense, I'm doing that now. What doesn't make sense is it only requires an additional 2% of RAM.

As for multi-tasking, I'm running out of porkers to load and I'm at 72%. (See attached images) After these screen shots I added Oprah and iPhoneToday, which is a UI on top of a UI. After playing around, I was able to get it to 77%. That's more apps than a 5 person office runs at a time. It still loads things fast. Initially, I thought scrolling perhaps was degraded slightly, but later I did before and after and even that wasn't affected. Maybe I don't have to worry.

As for the CHT UI, I read the User's Manual. It's only 12 pages, and 1/3 has to do with installing it. It's simple enough to where if you read it once to understand the paradigm it uses, you won't need to refer to again. I plan to run iPhoneToday inside of Sense/CHT and organize both to see which I like the best.

Edit It was tough to choose between Cookies Home Tab 2.0, AKA CHT 2.0, and iPhoneToday. You can't lose with either because the struggle is to pick the best of the best, rather than pick your poison. iPhoneToday is light, fast, and smooth. It would win if I were a fan of the iPhone interface, but I'm not a fan of anything except functionality and efficiency. In the end I went with Cookies Home Tab 2.0 for these reasons.

- It allows me to use widgets, and place them wherever I need.

- It allows me to place quicklinks called FreeLinks anywhere

- It allows me to have levels (scroll up and down) as well as pages (scroll side to side)

- If it doesn't support what you want directly, you can indirectly. Example: Let's say you want QuickLinks on all of your pages, line the iPhone, but not on the home screen where you have your clock weather. Just make the upper rows on your home screen invisible. Lets say you want one row of QuickLinks to be the same on every page. Simply pin them.

- There is no practical limitation that I've found as to how you arrange things. I can't say that about anything else I've tried.

- Configuration is easier to understand. The book is only 12 pages, 1/3 is install, another 1/3 is common sense, and the other 1/3 tells doesn't lead you step by step, it gives you the concept of operation. Because of that, once you read it, you'll never have to refer back to the manual.

I may not have gotten any help from the thread this time around, but other threads and people here have helped me plenty. Apparently, it was my turn to give back.

Enjoy!

PS: I also played with ThrottleLauncher and the WP7 clone. It didn't make the cut because its organizational capabilities are far too limited for someone like me (IT Architect) who has lots of apps. It's more for people who's life revolves around a close group of friends, music, and social networking. This is not a problem with ThrottleLauncher itself, but rather the design of the WP7 architecture. The real phone has the same problem.